“That’s the way I am. If I can see you, I can read you and know if you’re okay. Jenny was the same way.”

“So if I come down to Fort Myers Beach and let you read me, you will help me?”

“Depends on what I pick up.”

I made airline reservations for six-fifty the following morning. Lucy and I would fly to Miami. I would leave her with Dorothy and drive to Fort Myers Beach, where there was a very good chance I would spend a night wondering if I’d lost my mind. Chances were overwhelming that Jennifer Deighton’s holistic health nut of an ex would turn out to be a great big waste of time.

Saturday, the snow had stopped when I got up at four A.M. and went into Lucy’s bedroom to wake her. For a moment I listened to her breathe, then lightly touched her shoulder and whispered her name in the dark she stirred and sat straight up. On the plane, she slept to Charlotte, then wallowed in one of her unbearable moods the rest of the way to Miami.

“I’d rather take a cab,” she said, staring out the window..

“You can’t take a cab, Lucy. Your mother and her friend will be looking for you.”

“Good. Let them drive around the airport all day. Why can’t I come with you?”

“You need to go home, and I need to drive straight to Fort Myers Beach, and then I’m going to fly from there back to Richmond. Trust me. It wouldn’t be any, fun.”

“Being with Mother and her latest idiot isn’t any fun, either.”

“You don’t know he’s an idiot. You’ve never met him. Why don’t you give him a chance?”

“I wish Mother would get AIDS.”

“Lucy, don’t say such a thing.”

“She deserves it I don’t understand how she can sleep with every dickhead who takes her out to dinner and a movie. I don’t understand how she can be your sister.”

“Lower your voice,” I whispered.

“If she missed me so much, she’d want to pick me up herself. She wouldn’t want someone else around.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” I told her. “When you fall in love someday, you’ll understand better.”

“What makes you think I’ve never been in love?” She looked furiously at me.

“Because if you had been, you would know that being in love brings out both the best and the worst in us. One day we’re generous and sensitive to a fault, and the next we’re not fit to shoot. Our lives become lessons in extremes.”

“I wish Mother would hurry up and go through menopause.”